INSTEAD of crying their hearts out on the shoulders of social workers, women plagued by husbands with mistresses across the border ought to count themselves lucky. At least there is no doubt that they are the lawful wives, and their children are legitimate; that if anything happens to the husband, their rights are protected. And if they have any sense, they should dry their tears, bid good-bye to the sympathetic social worker, and dash to their lawyers or accountants to ensure that the family assets are preserved instead of being salted away or dissipated by these unworthy mates.
Not least, they should re-assess their own value in the job market and do their best to enhance it, so that when the time comes they should have no problem being financially independent, and secure a roof over their own heads and those of their children.
Having done that, they have really done all they can in their power. The rest is a tangle of personal, moral and psychological problems to be worked out, between them and their no-better-halves.
No one is trying to play down the trauma of discovering what cheap novels call the 'betrayal' of a husband. But matters could be worse. Indeed they were much worse for Hong Kong women barely a generation ago.
At that time, in the tough post-war 40s, the nightmare of the Hong Kong wife was that she should wake up one day to discover that, far from being her husband's lawful wife, she had actually been the unlawful mistress all along, because he had already been married in his native village in the mainland. The 'mainland wife' was the nervous joke then, when communication had broken off after the communist takeover in 1949, and no woman could be sure of her husband's past.
From time immemorial Chinese men have left their homes in the village to seek their fortunes in the city. Reunions with loved ones took place only over long holidays such as the Lunar New Year. But then when these men were cut off - and it appeared permanently - from their families in the native village, there came a time when they believed they needed, and were entitled, to have a new family in Hong Kong.